A shiver runs down my spine when I remember the day I finally found proof I was sharing my home with a large colony of bloodsucking insects. I didn't buy the idea that mosquitoes had suddenly infested Shepherd's Bush, or that we were living with fleas – after all, we had no pets. But the hard, red lumps that ran up and down my arms and around my ankles were a sign that something was up.

Someone suggested bed bugs. The tiny things with plate-armour bodies and hairy antennae that live between the sheets in backpacker hostels? I supposed it was possible. Wikipedia, as so often in these situations, provided the answer (I had used it to identify a weevil that floated to the top of a pan of boiling rice the week before). It said that these Cimicidae gather in gaps between the wooden slats that support mattresses – or in any nook or cranny they can find (they love floorboards). But I gulped when I saw how big they were. I had been thinking of dust mites. You don't need a microscope to see bed bugs, though. Imagine a cross between a ladybird and a woodlouse, and you're in the right area.

They had colonised every gap between the slats and the frame, and I didn't really know what to do. Their waxy eggs were implanted in the rough-sawn ends of the slats, stubborn and seemingly indestructible. I hosed them down with steam from a wallpaper stripper. I sprayed them with Mr Muscle. Still they waddled around, and the horrible eggs kept their shape. In the end I had to just sweep as many as I could up, blitz the bed frame with household chemicals and screw it back together.

I don't know if I slept much that night, but I remember waking up a lot in the week before the first fumigation (the council recommended at least two), convinced I'd felt something scamper over my shin. I'd jump up and throw back the covers – but nothing. In the night they were as elusive as they were relentless. I became morbidly fascinated by them – their weird sex lives, the various bits of lore surrounding infestation (do the bugs really bite in a line, tracking their victims' veins under the skin?).

I wondered what I had done wrong. I'm a fairly clean living person (the weevil was an aberration). The problem was that I lived in a four-storey block, divided into about 20 apartments. For bed bugs – which can travel 30 or 40 metres to feed – it was paradise. A couple of our neighbours had had their place fumigated, but, crucially, the building had never been done all at once. For the bed bugs, there was always somewhere they could hide.

Buying a new bed as soon as I could helped, as did the fumigation. But they recolonised my new bed and, eventually, I moved out. Bed bugs were a big part of that decision. I made doubly sure that the place I was moving into wasn't infested.